Posts by Pet Peeve

Re: disable javascript in your browser!

The only designerism related to jquery that I would consider harmful are css overrides, used because they can't be bothered to get their css right in the first place. Hint: if you have css overrides in your onload function, you are DOING IT WRONG.

jquery is a unequivocally great thing - I'm a little less thrilled with plugin-itis that creeps into pages these days, but in most cases I would rather have an amateur webdesigner use libraries than try to write it in code, which is always asking for trouble.

Re: Capital iZation...

@Graham - Ha! I have to apologize to Warm Braw - I thought he was complaining about the camelcased method names in the javascript snippet, and not the word "iFrame" in the article text. I have to agree that spelling it as "iFrame" is bad, wrong, and probably because of a little too much Apple on the brain (not that there's anything wrong with Apple itself).

It's "iframe", not "iFrame". Don't do that.

I reversed the downvote, sorry Braw!

Re: disable javascript in your browser!

Oh, what a pile of crap. Jquery is used by experts just as much as amateurs (if not more - javascript is not exactly friendly to start with) - a lot of things you do every day in javascript are extremely annoying otherwise.

Lots of clueless snark on this story today.

Re: disable javascript in your browser!

Turning off third-party javascript (with noScript or scriptNo) does indeed work, though it can sometimes be a royal pain in the posterior to figure out what each site considers the minimum necessary for proper rendering the first time you visit.

So, if the png is being sent from an ad site, this will indeed stop it dead. If it's a user uploaded image on the cdn subsite, which you've authorized in noScript, then you could still get nailed by this.

Re: So the user doesn't notice anything happening

I don't understand why the embedded tag data in a png would be evaluated as javascript by a browser - how is this happening?

Re: Capital iZation...

Dude. It's called "camel case", and it's existed as a naming convention since the 80s at least. Nothing to do with apple, please find another thing to be angry about.

Re: Shaky picture but with more detail

They already did this. You can get HD sets now with a 240hz refresh rate, and the 4k sets are starting out at 120hz.

You may be particularly sensitive to upscaling artifacts, and not really the refresh rate. Even 60hz 1080i is better than persistence of vision (30 fps, where POV is about 16-18fps), and any modern set showing a progressive picture is going to make it really hard to see flickering.

Edit: Turns out the eye's flicker rate is different than the POV rate. Flicker rate is about 48fps, so it is quite possible you are sensitive to flicker on a 60hz set displaying an interleaved picture. 120hz should sort that out for you.

Re: nope

4K is the current projection standard for theaters. What they're saying is that you're getting a theater-quality transfer, though I don't actually believe that - I imagine that digital theater projectors run on a much higher bandwidth than a blu-ray player can pump out through HDMI.

Re: 3D

A 4k TV can send an HD picture to each eye, plus the ones I've seen have a really bright screen with great contrast.

Personally I can't stand 3D and avoid it as much as possible, but if you like it, it will look better on a 4k tv than an HD one. Funny though, the sets I saw didn't even mention 3D on the info card.

I'm sure they support it, but since it's practically a negative marketing feature nowadays, the manufacturers are pretending it doesn't exist.

They'll probably look great. I can tell the difference between a blu-ray and a DVD picture at a glance, but DVDs still look quite good on a modern set, and they'll look as good or better on a 4k tv. It's all about the upscaling, and digital anything upscales very well.

Re: WGAF

Go and see one of these in the store and tell me you still don't want one.

Over the Christmas holiday I ran into a samsung 84 inch 4k tv (with an eye-watering price of $39,997). There was a moving cityscape playing, and it reminded me of "Gallifrey Falls No More" (spoiler alert!). It was scary how much detail there was.

It's silly to buy one now while there's almost no 4k content (though it does upscale HD stuff really, really well) and they're not ramped up for mass sales yet, but those same crazy prices were true of the orginal 1080p sets, and they came down to earth in a year or so.

NSA *HAS* strengthened encryption

I certainly get the skepticism here, but there has been at least one notable case where the NSA has meddled with a standard to improve it.

When DES was being developed, a part of the algorithm involved some lookup tables that were used to transform input to output as part of the encryption process. Shortly before the final version of the standard, NSA published a new set of tables and requested them to be adopted for the standard.

Years later, crypto researchers analyzed what the NSA did, and found that the original tables had some serious weaknesses that badly hurt DES. The new tables fixed the problem.

Now, I think this is a totally different situation. The problem with dual EC is not that it's weak as such (though it was actually the slowest performing of any of the randomizers in the standard by an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE), but that it is possible to create a relationship between the parameters of the curve that in effect creates a "master key" shortcut to decrypting the data, and there's no way to tell if that relationship exists. Guess who picked the curve for dual EC?

RSA had no good reason, short of money, to use this algorithm by default. It's quite possible they didn't know about the weakness (it took 3 years for mere mortals to figure out). But the fact remains, Dual EC was the worst choice of the three in the standard, by far, so why make it the default?

I've heard that some versions of Internet Explorer use it by default too, but I don't know if that's true. Dirty business.

Re: I can see how this works...

OK, that was funny as hell Bren, but seriously, bets on one of these units ever being sold? It's just a claim so he can keep his marks on the hook to fund him.

Re: And for a lighter look at hypergolic compounds..

Derek's hilarious blog entries about dangerous compounds pointed me at John Clark's amazing book "Ignition!" on liquid fuels. Look for a pdf online, it's out of print. After reading it, stories mentioning fuels and oxidizers make a lot more sense! UDMH and Nitrogen Tetroxide is a good choice.

Some Flourine compounds (though I doubt FOOF, you couldn't even get it in a tank probably) were tried as oxidizers, but they had a bad habit of dissolving tankage, rocket motors, and rocket scientists. Plus you wouldn't want to be downwind of the exhaust if they did work.

In the US, you see people at the grocery store wearing freaking pajamas and yoga pants. Admittedly the latter can have its charms (if the wearer does), but "style" and "class" are not much of a factor in public anymore.

Sometimes that's a shame (you wish people would at least wash and comb their hair), but on the other hand, the days are over where someone would look at your feet and infer your social standing from how nice your shoes are.

Re: I laugh out loud

Every time I see some anonymous coward calling someone "numpty", I think "what a twatwaffle" and ignore anything they say.

There's a couple problems with them looking like ordinary sunglasses. First, the whole idea of the display being up high is so that you can maintain eye contact, and it's immediately apparent when in real life someone isn't paying attention to you (their eyes go up and to the right). The other problem is that you then won't KNOW that someone is wearing them. The second brings up some SFnal social ideas, let me expand on that a bit.

I think there should be some signal that a person is connected. How many times have we seen some apparently-crazy person talking to themselves, when it was just a bluetooth headset in the ear opposite us (making the person merely douchey rather than insane)? A standard bit of design language (say, a curved bit of metal over both eyebrows, like the non-display parts of the Glass headset) would tell you that this person may not be talking to you. This replaces the now-missing social signal of the person holding their hand to their ear.

It also offers another possibility - as a warning that everything you do around this person is being recorded. With current cams (and I know the UK is hog-wild for them), they really only can be used AGAINST you. With a device that's always recording, quickly sending the result to a network store on write-once media, you would have a permanent first-person view of everything you do. If someone assaults you (or claims you assaulted them), you have perfect evidence to defend yourself. If you are witness to a crime, you can come forward as a witness, and give the officer a first-person replay of the event exactly as it happened, instead of how you THINK it happened. If you're suspected of a crime, your record will show exactly where you were at the time.

Of course, someone else can wear your glasses. Solution? Be standing in front of a mirror when you put them on, establishing it's you, and then the glasses themselves will confirm they weren't removed since the last time you authenticated yourself. Kind of cool, huh?

Exactly what is so terrible looking about them? They're certainly more attractive than a bluetooth headset.

Re: Airframe comparison

...This isn't funny, Lester...

Oh yes it is. Free tip - when trolling someone, you're supposed to make them upset, not make them laugh.

A point-by point refutation of your post would have to list practically every word with WRONG attached, but since you're "merely" trolling, it's certainly not worth the effort. Go away.

Re: Airframe comparison

Lester, don't engage the trolls. They don't care about your opinion and you only look silly when you join them under the bridge.

I don't think the roughness of the aeroshell will be a problem - back when I flew model rockets as a kid, they were made of cardboard, and the flew just as well painted as unpainted. This looks a little rougher than cardboard, but as others have said, that may actually be a positive, based on some recent research in fluid dynamics.

The thing that really gets me about the design is that you've created something that would be extremely difficult, if even possible, to duplicate via normal manufacturing. All of those braces in the plastic that so beaufifully spiral around the interior would be maddening to make with injection molding. That's pretty dang cool, but it probably means that we won't see DIY Vulture2 models in the hobby shop, which is a shame.

I'm sure I'm not the only one excited to hear about the onboard telemetry this thing will have. I assume the intent is to have it navigate back to the launch point - or will you be able to set a destination in flight? At the height of launch, if the autopilot works, you should be able to cover a lot of ground from the launch point. I'm looking forward to following Dave's realtime tracker again.